


Next Time Take Me Dancing

by miss_nettles_wife



Series: Whumptober 2019 [21]
Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, F/M, abduction for ransom, minor sexual implications, other characters appear briefly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 01:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21227744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Whumptober day 22: Ransom. Charlie's first date with Mattie ends with them both being kidnapped, which fits with his run of recent bad luck, honestly.





	Next Time Take Me Dancing

**Author's Note:**

> Took another night off, but I can see these are going to spill over into next month. Oh well. Also, Mattie's first inclusion in whumptober, in the words of whumpertrooper: about time. At any rate, this one was actually good fun to right, I tried taking a less detailed approach, to add to the feeling of head injury. Let me know if you liked it :-)

It would figure that when Charlie finally manages to score a date with Mattie that they’d end the night being kidnapped.

It was just how his lucked tended to be these days. He didn’t know what cosmic force he’d upset but frankly, he was coming to expect it. He was just expecting bad things to happen to him, not to Mattie. She was so nice, he couldn’t even fathom what she might have done to warrant ending up in a situation like this.

He did another slow case of the room that they’d been tossed in. It was mostly empty, except for a single table lamp on an ugly little nightstand, a bed with no sheets, and a hanging bulb overhead that was dead. He’d already tried pulling the string a bunch of times to no avail.

The room had no windows, which was probably a smart move on their part. It was maybe as big as a shipping container, and had about as good air circulation. He was sweating through his shirt, because the room seemed to conduct heat like an oven. He tapped on the walls, looking for potential spaces to breakthrough or a hidden door. He didn’t find any. The floor was solid, and cement so it wasn’t like he could pry up a board.

He turned his pockets out onto the bed. They’d taken his wallet, and watch, and shoelaces but allowed him to keep the scrap of paper with the address of the theatre, a few coins and the wrapper off a breath mint. Nothing useful there, and Mattie had no pockets so anything she might have of use would be in her confiscated handbag.

Damn.

With nothing better to do for now, he sat on the side of the bed and wondered if he could somehow make his now lose shoes into weapons. The soles were made of fairly solid rubber, and he knew from experience that they could deal some damage if thrown. He didn’t want to play all his cards just yet, he needed to wait until Mattie finished giving proof of life on the phone before he did anything. He didn’t want to risk her life if he didn’t have to, but he knew that there was no way that they were leaving here alive.

He wasn’t being dramatic; they’d both seen the faces of both abductors. Even if Charlie’s head still hurt like a mother fucker his vision wasn’t compromised. If they were just let go after Mattie’s Old Man paid the ransom they’d both be able to identify them with no trouble, not to mention they were both armed and dangerous.

The door opened, and Mattie was shoved inside, she landed on all fours, and scrabbled back to her feet as quickly as she could. Both of her shoes were missing, leaving behind only her stockinged feet. The man, the shorter one who managed to knock Charlie out on the walk to the car pointed at him and crooked his finger.

He was a mean-looking bastard, very tall but well-muscled. Charlie couldn’t take him in a fight, not in the state he was in. He obeyed the order and walked to the main room of the...Well, he wasn’t sure where they were. He thought it might be some kind of freestanding shed. A granny flat? There was a large set of windows in this room, but the curtains were drawn so he couldn’t see where they were, and even if he could he wasn’t about to make a break for it through the window and abandon Mattie here. He could also see that they both had a gun tucked into their waistband. If the broken glass didn’t kill him, they probably would before he was able to get very far.

He sat in the chair he was directed too and took a hold of the phone.

“Hello?”

“Oh, Charlie! Thank God!” It’s Matthew, he knows the voice well enough by now. Rather than provide him with anything more, he says

“Don’t let Mr O’Brien give them anything they aren’t going to let us l-” The shorter man threw him to the ground and slammed the phone down. Charlie landed with a crunch and a thud, and stars spun rapidly in his vision. The taller one grabbed him by the short hair on the back of his head and pulled him up. He fought the entire way, scrambling for purchase on the smooth cement floor.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” He demanded. Charlie struggled to see through the haze of red hot pain coating his vision.

“We both know I’m not getting out of this alive.” He said, “I’ve seen both of your faces.” His brazen behaviour was rewarded by being thrown to the ground. Honestly, he wasn’t mad, he was glad the pressure on his scalp had stopped. His self-preservation instinct forced him to try and scramble away before the shorter one grabbed the back of his legs, his arms unable to support him he hit the ground face first.

“Maybe you won’t, we haven’t decided yet.” And he dragged Charlie by the back of his shirt into the room with Mattie. She gasped when she saw him and glared a set of daggers at the man who dropped him on the floor and knelt to help him get to his knees at least. He could taste copper in his mouth, he surmised that his nose was bleeding. Damn, he hoped it wasn’t broken.

“What the Hell did you do?!” She demanded, crouching by him, looking both angry and mystified.

“It’s not important.” He said, “We have to get out of here.”

“My father said he’s going to pay the ransom.” She said, “They said they wouldn’t hurt me so long as he, and we did not do anything stupid.” Pause, “Which it seems you didn’t hear.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt your father will reach into his endless pockets for the money.” He said, “But Mattie, we’ve seen their faces.” He dropped his voice to a whisper for that last part, “And I know who they are. I’ve arrested them before.”

“What?” She hissed back, apparently willing to overlook him having a go at her old man.

“They’ve done this scam before, and leaving a witness got them thrown in jail for extortion. Do you think they’ll make the same mistake twice?”

“Oh, God!” She hissed and dropped to sit rather than crouch. She looked at the door like she was expecting someone to burst through. They don’t, so she turns to him, her eyebrows tightly drawn. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He confessed, “I couldn’t see any way out, did you?”

“No.” She said back, “And we have no weapons?”

“We have my shoes and maybe that lamp.”

“We need that lamp for light.”

“I know.”

Mattie’s dress is a short cut and tightly fitted. Very fashionable, and printed with little tiny suns and sunflowers. He wasn’t the biggest fan of the direction fashion was headed in but she made it work.

He’d wanted to go out with her for a long time, since before she left for London. But she’d always had a man, and if she didn’t she probably didn’t want him. After all, the first time they met she elbowed him in the face and he arrested her. But that felt like a lifetime ago now, after all, that had transpired. The Doc’s wife coming back from the dead, Matthew getting hit by a car, Alderton trying to get Blake into the Army, the Divorce Scandal, the two years where the man had been missing in action, Jean running for and getting elected, going to Bonehead. All that stuff had changed him, changed his outlook on love and romance.

Life was short, and he was finished wasting time. Up until the whole getting kidnapped thing, they’d had a lovely evening. Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb was an interesting enough picture, just scary enough to claim that the hand holding going on was for moral support. Dinner at the little down the street had been tasty, but admittedly he hadn’t been interested in his meal as much as listening to Mattie talk about London. Their original plan had been to maybe go dancing before they headed home, but they weren’t in their twenties anymore and dancing seemed like a lot of noise when they could just go back to the Blake house, drink and chat.

No matter how much time passed, he didn’t think that the Blake House would ever not feel like home.

  
“I could seduce one.”

“What?” He asked, his cotton stuffed brain pulled back to the present by his date, who had apparently been whispering to him this entire time, and that must have been the buzzing noise he’d written off as concussion.

“Seduce one. The big one tried to grab my arse when you were out.”

“Jesus.” He said.

“If I seduce one, maybe we can convince them to let us go?” Charlie didn’t claim to have any particular knowledge of the human brain but he was pretty sure reverse Stockholm syndrome would take more than a single fuck to strike up. But that did give him an idea. Maybe all hope was not lost just yet.

“We need to do more than just seduce one.” He whispered, “You start the seduction, I’ll get ready.” Mattie nodded, stood, brushed off her skirt and knocked on the door.

Honestly, her plan was brilliant. She put on a baby voice and told the taller one who answered the door that she didn’t want to die a virgin and Charlie was a being frigid. Maybe Rose was right with that Men are Pigs stuff because it worked. He shouted something out the door about the other guy having to wait his turn and told Mattie she was a nasty whore, but he wouldn’t turn down a free fuck.

  
He pretended to block his ears while sitting facing the corner, thinking about his plan over and over again in his head. If he could get over Mattie’s fake moaning of course. She was a good seducer, but he didn’t want her to actually have to have sex with the guy, so he just needed to wait until…

Now.

With as much speed as he could muster, Charlie grabbed the lamp from the side table, and smashed it down on top of the head of the taller man. He collapsed on top of Mattie in a heap, and suddenly Charlie was in possession of one of the two guns in the room. They were also plunged into darkness, because their one light source was now destroyed.

The door swung open and he suddenly had a gun pointed at him.

“What the Hell did you do?!” He demanded, Charlie kept the gun pointed at him. He thought about speaking, but honestly he couldn’t be bothered. He shot the guy in the shoulder holding the gun, forcing it out of his hand.

He helped Mattie out from under the one on top of her and brushed shards of the lamp out of her face. She had some small cuts on her face, but was otherwise unharmed, thankfully.

“You shot him.” She said, sounding impressed.

“I can’t be bothered with trying to talk it out.”

“I’ll remember that.” She said and helped Charlie drag the shorter man into the room. They locked the door behind them, and while Mattie found the address for the building on some mail, he rang the phone's last dialed number.

The answerer was a very frazzled Martin O’Brien.

“You said we had twenty-four hours!” He exclaimed.

“Mr O’Brien, we’re fine.” he said, “We overpowered those guys, and we have both firearms in the building.”

“Oh, thank god.” He said, “Hang on, your boss wants to speak to you, Detective Davis.”

“Charlie, if you are in any danger, I need you to let me know now. Cough, or tap the phone, I just need to know.”

Oh, that was smart. Charlie hadn’t thought that this might be a hoax. That was why Matthew was the boss.

“We’re fine. But you need to send an ambulance too -” He read the address of the letter Mattie was holding - “Eleven Torent Place.”

“Jesus, is Ms. O’Brien okay?”

“She’s fine, but the guy I shot probably isn’t doing so well. Here, I’ll put her on.” He passed the phone to Mattie, and turned to throw open the curtains. He recognized that they were on the so-called wrong side of the tracks, in some kind of industrial area. He hadn’t been down here for a while.

He leaned a chair up against the doorknob of the room with Tall and Short in it, just to make sure they didn’t get out.

Then, he sat on a large, ugly couch and leaned forward. He felt sick, probably had a concussion he assessed, The Doc was gonna be mad. Mattie sat next to him and kicked her feet up onto the upturned milk palettes being used as a table.

“It’s been a hell of a night.”

“If you never want to go out with me again, I’ll understand totally.” He said, and her laugh sounds like how a cold shower after mowing the lawn on a hot day feels.

“Next time, maybe just take me dancing.” 


End file.
